New Update on the "Never Ending Simpit Build"!
Conundrum: I wanted trims for my elevator, rudder and Ailerons but whenever I tried to make some they were way to "touchy". A very little movement of my levers resulted in huge movement in trims. Soooo, I built something that would allow alot of movement in the levers a very little on the pots.
The pit is a bit torn apart right now as I have been experimenting with options for my control layout. You can see that I moved the throttle assembly back about five inches, leaving a gaping hole. I will think of something to cover it up. The two levers (large knobs) on the left side are the rudder and elevator trims, the aileron trim is on the right.
There were several issues that I had to work out;
1. how to get one turn of the knob to equal about a mm of travel on the pots,
2. The system that I worked out works but turning too hard on the knob would result in breaking my new gear assembly so I made the gear assembly free standing, or not attatched to anything other than the knob. This allowed the assembly to be rotated if it reaches the end of its travel.
3. how to attatch the knob to the assembly and yet make the entire assembly to be ridgely affixed to the simpit.
The final assembly looks like this:
A run on the CNC gave me those black (actually a recycled plastic material)bearing housings which bolt to the inner panel of the simpit (either inside or outside as you notice from the first picture). More of the recycled plastic connected the 2-56 threaded rod on the assembly to the 1/4 bolt for the knob, both ends being tapped for the proper thread size. For now I put a bit of hard foam behind the knobs to create a stiff resistence to movement which will keep them from turning accidently.
The assembly itself is made of two gears, one standard and the other a worm gear. The CNC was again used to make the assembly plates (I ran it a bit fast resulting in the plastic melting to the bit and "buffing" the edges of the cut..which is where that white blemishing comes from...the cut was otherwise perfect.
A few closeups of the assemblies:
The system works to perfection. I took up a brewster Buffalow and an ME109G both trimed out to level hands off flight with a cuple of turns each on the trims.
My Simpit is starting to look a bit like Frankensteins monster but when I get everything working and in place for comfort of movement I will build Simpit MKII from what I learned on this one.
David